1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for processing price discount coupons issued by manufacturers, and more particularly to a market research system and method for management of manufacturer's discount coupon offers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Manufacturer discount coupons are being increasingly used to encourage the purchase of consumer goods and services by manufacturers nationwide. A typical manufacturer's discount coupon gives consumers the opportunity to buy a specific product of the manufacturer at a discount, for example, fifty cents less than the normal retail price for that product. Some discount coupons have a specified expiration date and others have no expiration date. Coupon offers are made by various ways, such as, by publication as a free-standing insert (FSI) in newspapers or magazines, direct mail, in-package or on-package coupons and in-store coupon distribution. Consumers redeem the coupon at the point of sale by a retailer, such as a supermarket, that subsequently sends the redeemed coupons to a clearing house or to the manufacturer issuing the coupons.
Various arrangements have been employed for the collection, summarization and forwarding of Point-Of-Sale purchasing information from retail stores for purposes of market research since the advent of Point-Of-Sale (POS) optical scanners and the widespread use of the Universal Product Code (UPC) to identify retain products. Typically, retail purchase data is summarized by an in-store POS controller or by a separate store computer attached to the POS controller in the store or, if the store is part of a large retail store chain, by a central or host computer at the headquarters of the retail store chain. The summarized retail purchase data is then typically forwarded to the users of the data by any one of a number of different data storage and transmission techniques, for example, by magnetic tape or disk or diskette or by telephonic data transmission or by over-the-air data transmission.
The following prior art patents bear at least some relation to one or more of the disclosed features of the present invention:
______________________________________ INVENTOR(S) U.S. Pat. No. TITLE ______________________________________ Larsen 3,899,775 AUTOMATIC STORE TRANSACTION SYSTEM AND TERMINAL THEREFOR Lazarus 4,012,132 BROADCAST MARKET SURVEY DATA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM AND METHOD Fuller 4,014,004 AUTOMATIC REPORT REGISTER Bridges, Jr. et al 4,141,078 LIBRARY CIRCULATION CONTROL SYSTEM Marshall 4,166,540 DOCUMENT SORTER UTILIZING CASCADED SORTING STEPS Marshall 4,208,652 METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IDENTIFYING IMAGES Whitlow et al 4,210,961 SORTING SYSTEM Call 4,290,688 APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING MARKET SURVEY DATA FROM UNIVERSAL PRODUCT TYPE CODED ITEMS Eskin et al 4,331,973 PANELIST RESPONSE SCANNING SYSTEM Johnson et al 4,355,372 MARKET SURVEY DATA COLLECTION METHOD Gomersall et al 4,500,880 REAL TIME, COMPUTER-DRIVEN RETAIL PRICING DISPLAY SYSTEM McKenna et al 4,546,382 TELEVISION AND MARKET RESEARCH DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Murphy et al 4,554,446 SUPERMARKET INVENTORY CONTROL SYSTEM AND METHOD Pejas et al 4,588,881 SYSTEM FOR MONITORING THE MOVEMENTS OF GOODS INWARDS AND/OR OUTWARDS Musmanno et al 4,597,046 SECURITIES BROKERAGE-CASH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OBVIATING FLOAT COSTS BY ANTICIPATORY LIQUIDATION OF SHORT TERM ASSETS Kurland et al 4,603,232 RAPID MARKET SURVEY COLLECTION AND DISSEMINATION METHOD Gomersall 4,630,108 PREPROGRAMMED OVER-THE-AIR MARKETING RESEARCH SYSTEM Caswell et al 4,636,950 INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING TRANSPONDERS ASSOCIATED WITH SPECIFIC PRODUCTS Lerner 4,642,767 BOOKKEEPING AND ACCOUNTING SYSTEM McKenna et al 4,658,290 TELEVISION AND MARKET RESEARCH DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Sharpe et al 4,713,761 SYSTEM FOR CENTRALIZED PROCESSING OF ACCOUNTING AND PAYMENT FUNCTIONS Roberts et al 4,752,877 METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FUNDING A FUTURE LIABILITY OF UNCERTAIN COST Musmanno et al 4,774,663 SECURITIES BROKERAGE-CASH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH SHORT TERM INVESTMENT PROCEEDS ALLOTTED AMONG MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS Yourick 4,775,935 VIDEO MERCHANDISING SYSTEM WITH VARIABLE AND ADOPTIVE PRODUCT SEQUENCE PRESENTATION ORDER McKenna et al 4,816,904 TELEVISION AND MARKET RESEARCH DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM AND METHOD Marshall 4,853,882 SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROTECTING AGAINST REDUNDANT MAILINGS Lu 4,858,000 IMAGE RECOGNITION AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD Nichtberger et al 4,882,675 PAPERLESS SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTING, REDEEMING AND CLEARING MERCHANDISE COUPONS Kiewit 4,930,011 METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF A MARKETING AND VIEWING AUDIENCE Marshall 4,937,742 AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR STATISTICALLY ANALYZING DATA CHARACTERISTICS OF SHIPMENTS OF COUPONS TO IDENTIFY INSTANCES OF COUPON SHIPMENT PARAMETRIC ABNORMALITIES Daniel et al 4,972,504 MARKETING RESEARCH SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OBTAINING RETAIL DATA ON A REAL TIME BASIS ______________________________________
The Mckenna et al '382 patent concerns, inter alia, a data collection system for collecting at a central location television viewing data and retail purchase data from a plurality of cooperating households. Each of the households includes a hand-held optical scanner for reading bar codes, i.e., UPC codes, associated with retail products purchased by the household. Scanned retail product purchase data and the television viewing data are stored in a common memory in the household and are periodically transmitted by telephone to a central site for processing and market research analysis.
The Eskin et al '973 patent, the Cogswell et al '974 patent and the Wright, Jr. '589 patent disclose, inter alia, a market research system utilizing a plurality of cooperating retail stores for obtaining and transmitting to a central location retail product purchase information concerning a plurality of cooperating panelists. The POS scanners in each of the cooperating retail stores scan bar encoded panelist identification cards and the UPC codes on the products purchased by each such panelist. Each retail store's in-store computer then stores a record of the products purchased by each such cooperating panelist, which record is subsequently transferred to a market research company at a remote location for analysis and possible correlation with television viewing data obtained from the same cooperating panelists.
The Gomersall '108 patent is directed to an over-the-air market research system and method and discloses, inter alia, the collection of retail product purchase information from a plurality of cooperating households by means of a UPC scanner provided to each information may be obtained from cooperating retail stores in a test area. Each store's computer stores and periodically forwards a record of the retail products purchased by each cooperating household, identified by a scanned or manually entered identification code for each cooperating household, which information is periodically transmitted by telephone to a central computer for analysis by market researchers. The information transmitted typically includes at least an identification of the cooperating household, an identification of the retail product purchases made by that household and the identification of the retail store transmitting the data. As disclosed in the '108 patent, the data collected, stored and transmitted by each such store may also include the price of each retail product purchased, the date of the purchase and the time of the purchase.
The Larsen '775 patent discloses, inter alia, an automatic store transaction system in which a keyboard is provided at each POS terminal for entering data. A transceiver is also provided at each POS terminal for transmitting data to and receiving data from a central processor. The system is particularly useful for inventory control and for providing data on sales rates and checker productivity.
The Johnson et al '372 patent, reissued as U.S. Pat. No. Re. 31,951, discloses, inter alia, a market research data collection system in which market research data, corresponding to the retail products purchased by a cooperating panelist, are transmitted by telephone from each cooperating household to a remotely located central computer for processing and market research analysis. The data collection system includes a hand-held optical scanner located in each household for scanning and storing UPC codes and for entering and storing other related data, for example, the identification of the retail store at which the retail products were purchased.
The Bridges, Jr. et al '078 patent discloses, inter alia, a library book circulation control system utilizing optical scanners for reading bar codes associated with library books.
The Gomersall et al '880 patent discloses, inter alia, a computer operated retail pricing display system for displaying pricing and other information in real-time at the shelf or bin location of a product in a retail store.
A system corresponding at least in part to that disclosed in the above-identified Eskin et al '973 patent and the Cogswell et al '974 patent and the Wright, Jr. '589 patent has been used to obtain market research data from a plurality of cooperating retail stores. The market research data obtained thereby is dependent upon cooperation by the store operators and upon the data collection and processing characteristics of each in-store computer or controller that controls the POS scanners/registers.
The Nichtberger et al. '675 patent discloses an in-store paperless system for electronically distributing, redeeming and clearing merchandise coupons.
The Murphy et al. '446 patent discloses a supermarket inventory control system including a sales voucher printer located in each store for printing machine readable coded sales vouchers, an in-store data processor for controlling a plurality of POS terminals and a single scan coupon concentrator at each store for processing coupon redemption and sale voucher information to identify compliance with coded conditions and transmitting control signals to the in-store data processor for crediting customers, collecting money, or indicating non-compliance. A remotely located scan host computer periodically retrieves accumulated sales voucher information from the scan coupon concentrator for transmission to the manufacturers for processing. A remotely located chain host computer periodically retrieves accumulated total sales information from the instore data processor.
The Marshall '540 patent discloses an automatic document sorter that performs a plurality of cascaded sorting steps, particularly suitable for automatically sorting diverse retail store coupons having a wide variety of physical characteristics and at the same time being able to differentiate between virtually identical coupons from different offers.
The Marshall '652 patent discloses an image identification system and method particularly suitable for identifying an image of a manufacturer's coupon.
The Marshall '742 patent discloses an automated system and method for statistically analyzing data characteristics of shipments for coupons to identify coupon shipment parametric abnormalities. An operational knowledge database in which data characteristics of interest associated with a plurality of previously processed coupon shipments from a plurality of retail stores is used to statistically derive allowable ranges for comparison with data characteristics of new coupon shipments. A decision to pay the submitting retail stores or to deny payment or refer the payment decision to the involved manufacturers is provided.
While many of the above prior art systems and methods constitute significant improvements over prior manual systems and methods of collecting market research data, many make no provision for the collection of coupon information. None of the above prior art systems and methods provide an automated approach for management of manufacturer's discount coupon offers.